The Ghost of Lynus Hayes

The ghost of Dr. Lynus Hayes had haunted the corridors of the Exhault 5 space station for 150 years. In that time he had broken several records; first confirmed haunting of an artificial satellite; first confirmed spiritual visitation by a Nobel laureate; first ghost to be given the Diana Spencer Award for Contributions to Paranormal Science (awarded posthumously, of course).

Now, as the station was scheduled to be demolished, Dr. Lynus Hayes was making headlines once again.

The most recent phenomena began with the mysteriously disappearing selected log posts of various station administrators and senior staff. In themselves, they seemed innocuous enough; but checking them against the backup logs revealed odd aspects about each log that demanded further investigation.

The administrators and officials were none too happy to be interviewed about their logs–some particularly so–which alerted officials to something serious going on. Deeper investigation confirmed tampered log times, obscured facts and the cover-up of various activities, leading to the discovery of frequent liberties taken by the senior staff against junior staff, salaried workers, and even their children. The projected trials initiated against the officials are expected to tie up sector courts for years.

Then came the corrupted or vanished equipment logs, prompting more checks against backups and, like the earlier investigations, revealing evidence of lost and stolen equipment throughout the station. Creative examination of the missing equipment suggested the possibility of sinister and highly immoral experiments being conducted on at least two of the extra-planetary species that had been brought to the station for “diplomatic fact-finding.” Only the discovery of the tampered logs allowed authorities to discover a heinous secret that would have been lost in the destruction of the satellite.

And most shockingly, the discoveries investigators found when alerted to corrupted logs in the experimental labs. Examination of the flagged logs revealed that a previously-assumed failed dimensional portal experiment had not been the failure that authorities had been told; that the station executives had continued to draw funds for further R&D into a system that was already working, and which had already transported people, equipment and supplies to a hitherto unknown planet in another dimension. The atrocities discovered to be happening there, involving the hitherto missing equipment and many of the station executives and personnel that had been reported killed in station “accidents,” represent a blight on human history that may never be expunged.

Perhaps the single most amazing discovery was the body of Dr. Lynus Hayes, found in a shallow grave on the other dimension’s planet. The state of the long-decomposed body suggested it had been put through many tortures and other indignities, apparently while Dr. Hayes was still alive, and even more after he had passed. Parapsychologists speculate that it was the atrocities committed upon Hayes that caused his restless and insulted spirit to haunt the station for so long.

A few parapsychologists, however, note as interesting the time discrepancy: That carbon dating placed Dr. Hayes death as happening ninety years ago… a full seventy years after the first documented haunting of the station by Hayes’ ghost…